October 3rd, 2006 → 6:04 pm @ Seth Mnookin
Two thousand and six was — by far — the worst year of Pedro Martinez’s bejeweled career. His year-end line: 9-8, 132.2 innings pitched, a 4.48 ERA, 137 K’s. For those of you keeping track at home, that’s Pedro’s worst ERA ever. The only season in which he’s had less strikeouts was 1993…his rookie year. His two-year totals with the Mets are 24-16, 345 Ks, and a 3.55 ERA. That would have put him eighth in NL ERA this year.
Pedro did, to be sure, display flashes of the brilliance that has made him one of the best pitchers ever to play the game. Even with his miserable performances of the last several weeks, his .220 BAA would have placed him third in the league (behind Chris Young and Carlos Zambrano) had he pitched enough innings to qualify. And during the season’s first months, he showed, perhaps more than ever before, that he’s a brilliant pitcher and not just a fireballer.
But the Pedro Martinez who finished the year looked a lot different from the one that sauntered into Boston on June 28 for his first start at Fenway since he left the Sox after 2004. At that point, he was 7-3 with a 3.02 ERA, and there was lots of moaning about how the Sox should have done more to re-sign Pedro when he hit free agency. There were stories in the press about how Pedro wanted to come back, but the Sox just wouldn’t pony up.
That, to but it bluntly, is a pile of crap. I pointed that out at the time and got no small amount of grief. There might have been circumstances in which Pedro would have come back to Boston, but he gave every indication that it was not his first choice.
And as painful as this season was, it would have been more painful if Pedro had been another one of the walking wounded populating Yawkey Way. Pedro never was quite able to accept Curt Schilling taking over the mantle as the best pitcher on the Sox’s staff. He griped about it before the ’04 season, he griped about it during the ’04 season, and he griped about it after he signed with the Mets. As Peter Gammons said two years ago, it was “preposterous” that Pedro didn’t bother to show up in New York for Game 6 of the ’04 ALCS…a game Schilling happened to be pitching. With all of the drama and all of the soap operas swirling around Fenway this year, can you imagine what it would have been like to add a hurt, jealous Pedro Martinez to the mix?
Finally, after two years in which Pedro cost the Mets a million bucks a win (which is, granted, slightly less than what Matt Clement has cost the Sox thus far), there’s a decent chance that the $26 million he’s costing the team for ’07 and ’08 will be pretty much sunk costs. If the Red Sox want to continue trying to compete with the Yankees, there’s two things they can’t do: make poor decisions (more on that later) and spend tens of millions of dollars on players in, ahem, the twilight of their careers.
I’ve said many, many times that Pedro is one of my all-time favorite players. I got chills when he returned to Fenway. Watching him strike out 17 Yankees in 1999 is one of the highlights of my baseball-watching life. But it should be clearer than ever that the Red Sox — whether that be Theo, Larry, or whomever — made the right move in not ponying up more than 50 million for a 33-year-old pitcher who is generously listed as being 5-11 and has had a history of shoulder problems.
(More year-end wrap-ups and report cards — as well as a look back at the free-agent pitching class of 2004 — in the days to come.)
Post Categories: 2006 Wrap-ups and report cards & Pedro Martinez
October 2nd, 2006 → 11:59 am @ Seth Mnookin
I promised year-end wraps up and year-end wrap ups I will produce…but not today. It’s Yom Kippuer, and, just like Sandy Koufax, I don’t play on Yom Kippur. There’ll be lots to talk about over the next several days — Pedro, the frustrating division choke by the Tigers, Devern Hansack’s odd it-won’t-count no hitter, Manny, the Sox’s front office, and on and on — so hold tight.
Post Categories: Jewish holidays & Oblique references to Arrested Development
October 1st, 2006 → 5:16 pm @ Seth Mnookin
You remember Jason Grimsley, right? Back in June, the Diamondbacks reliever was busted by federal agents when he signed for a shipment of human growth hormone; within days, he’d given an affidavit in which he named a bunch of names of MLB players who’d recommended PED regimens and/or used the drugs themselves.
Well, as Will Leitch predicted, the names in those affidavits didn’t stay blacked out for long. Today’s Los Angeles Times has a report in which they reveal those players: Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte, who played with Grimsely on the Yankees, and Miguel Tejada, Brian Roberts and Jay Gibbons, who played with Grimsely on the Orioles. (David Segui, now retired, has already told ESPN he was one of the names in the Grimsley affidavit.) Grimsley, according to the Times piece, met his first steroid supplier through former Yankees trainer Brian McNamee, who remains Clemens’s and Pettitte’s personal strength coach.
Anyone who’s followed Clemens’s remarkable career shouldn’t be completely surprised by this. (As Buster Olney wrote earlier today, Clemens’s name was not “being whispered on background” after the Grimsley affidavit, “it was being shouted behind the scenes.”) Before the start of this season, Clemens had the best winning percentage of any pitcher after age 40, the third best ERA, the third best walks plus hits per nine innings, the third best hits per nine innings, the second best strikeouts per nine innings, and the fifth most strikeouts. Save for K/9, Clemens’s post-40 numbers are all better than those he put up from ages 21 through 39. The question is, why hasn’t someone looked into this possibility before?
Olney thinks the fact that Clemens’s name is in the affidavit won’t affect whether or not he returns next year. If true, I think that’s a sign of arrogance, although Olney clearly disagrees. But it should affect whether or not the Red Sox pursue Clemens in the offseason, as they did before before the ’06 season and at this summer’s trade deadline. As Jerry Remy noted in last night’s broadcast, the media coverage of the Red Sox is unique: “It’s probably the only place in the country where there’s a baseball story in both papers every single day of the offseason.” A PED scandal in Boston would make the tempest surrounding Manny’s knee injury seem like a decorous meeting of the local library lovers club.
Clemens will get a lot of scrutiny, and a lot of criticism, over the coming days and weeks. (Can you imagine what it would have been like had the Astros made the playoffs?) But this is a black mark on more than just a handful of players. It hasn’t been long since the country’s sportswriters made massive mea culpas — with special reports, investigative articles, and tendentious broadcasts — promising that never again would they turn a blind eye to players who mysteriously bulk up or show odd performance spikes. And yet there’s been very few questions asked of Jason Giambi concerning his remarkable return to his peak performances…which occurred during a time in which Giambi has acknowledged he was using steroids. And there’s been nary a published peep about Clemens.
Back in June, Jeff Pearlman asked, in Slate, why the country’s sportswriters were pretending that the steroid era was over. It was a good question then. It’s an even better — and more embarrassing one — now.
Post Categories: Jason Giambi & Jason Grimsley & Obvious references to Casablanca & Roger Clemens & Sports Reporters & Steroids
September 29th, 2006 → 11:41 am @ Seth Mnookin
As the Sox head into the season’s final series, there’s plenty of news to consider. Will Wily Mo ever learn to play the outfield (as Terry Francona and the rest of the Sox brass desperately hope)? Related to that, will Sunday be Trot Nixon’s last game in a Red Sox uniform? Will Matt Clement ever pitch again? (And do we even want him to?) Will Gonzo win the Gold Glove he deserves? And will he be patrolling the Sox infield in 2007, or will Boston, as seems increasingly likely, go hard after Julio Lugo? Finally, will Jerry Trupiano still be calling Sox games for WEEI alongside Joe Castiglione next year or will he be replaced by Sox PR man Glenn Geffner, who may or may not have been promised the job last year when he turned down a broadcasting job with another MLB team?
These waning days of the regular season bring plenty of non-Sox excitement as well. To wit: are the Mets, a team that is suddenly forced to rely on El Duque as its #1 postseason starter, still a force to be reckoned with? Will Pedro ever pitch again, and if he does, will he ever be the dominant performer we’ve grown accustomed to? Will the Tony LaRussa’s Cardinals suffer one of the most ignominious collapses in history? (As someone who can’t stand Tony LaRussa but counts many Cardinal partisans among his friends, I’m a bit conflicted on this one.) (Also, remember when there was all that talk about how the non-Clemens trade at the deadline meant Roger had lost his last, best chance at playing in one final postseason?)
That’s a lot of questions…and we’ll get at least some answers in the next 60 or so hours.
September 29th, 2006 → 11:23 am @ Seth Mnookin
Way back in June, I said Manny Ramirez was likely to finish out his contract with the Red Sox. I based that conclusion on a couple of factors: Manny’s $160 million contract, signed in that crazy free-agent winter of 2000, no longer looked so onerous. (This is due to a bunch of reasons which could make up a post of their own, but the gist of them are: Manny hasn’t seen the decline in skills many people feared and revenue sharing has given small-revenue clubs enough money to sign their young superstars before they hit the open market, making it unclear where the Sox could better spend that $20 million a year.) What’s more, Manny seemed to be making good on a promise he made to John Henry when Ramirez visited the Red Sox owner at his Florida house during spring training. For the first four-and-a-half months of the season, he was putting up his usual prodigious numbers and was playing hard, wasn’t complaining, and, for the first time in memory, seemed genuinely happy to be in Boston.
Well, as that gender-neutral named author S.E. Hinton first said back before Manny was born, that was then, this is now. Manny hasn’t been a regular in the Red Sox’s lineup since the mid-August, Yankees-induced Boston massacre; in 35 games since then, he’s put together only 22 at-bats (and 27 plate appearances). That’s about 3/4 of a plate appearance per game…or a full trip to the plate less than the ferocious offensive powerhouse known as Gabe Kapler has gotten over that same stretch.
Manny’s lingering absence — officially ascribed to tendonitis in his knee— has prompted rumors of malingering since the days after that Yankees series, when the Providence Journal‘s Sean McAdam wrote an article in which he described Manny’s being infuriated by an official scorer’s call and said at least one player was worried about an impending “episode.” The Sox — from Manny’s teammates to his manager to the front office — have officially stood behind Ramirez (even after he backed out of a game earlier this week), and, as the New York Mets learned yesterday, there can be harsh consequences to trying to come back early from an injury. But behind the scenes, Manny’s absence has ruffled more than a few feathers, and Manny, once again, has summoned his agent to Boston to request a trade…with the list of teams Manny’s willing to play for apparently growing by the day.
As is often the case, (and as I’ve written about before), any reporting of unrest in Manny world inevitably results in a round of proverbial rotten eggs being thrown at the media doing the reporting. The Globe‘s Gordon Edes learned that in a particularly painful fashion this weekend, when a critical column of his prompted more than just the usual round of hate mail; this time, Edes actually had a disgruntled reader call him at home. (Edes didn’t point out the irony of a member of a fanbase that often complains about the ways in which the Boston media violates the Sox’s privacy violating his privacy in a much more frightening manner…so I will.) But it’s not just Edes and McAdam who’re writing about the ways in which Manny is impacting the Sox.
***
In the two-and-a-half months since Feeding the Monster was released, the most common reader queries have shifted from questions about Theo and Nomar to questions about Manny. I usually explain him thusly: he’s someone unusually dedicated to his craft. He works incredibly hard, isn’t a clubhouse distraction, and genuinely cares; you don’t put up these numbers coasting by on raw talent. What’s so confusing — and so fascinating — is the way in which that drive is combined with periods of total apathy. There are those players who don’t work very hard and don’t do that well (*cough* Doug Mirabelli *cough*) and players that work their butts off and succeed beyond where their God-given talents would naturally bring them. But I’ve never encountered anyone — in baseball or in the rest of my life — who combines the raw talent, the will to succeed, and the frequent stretches of apparent disinterest exhibited by Ramirez. When fans detect a frustration on the part of the media (or the front office) in regards to Manny, I suspect it doesn’t stem from some sort of latent disregard; that’s why, during those periods in which Manny is absolutely crushing the ball, there are very few complaints about the ways in which he ignores the media or suffers from occasional brain farts in the field. I’d bet this frustration is roughly parallel to the frustration friends, or family, or whomever feels when someone they’re close to is occasionally squanders his or her talent and abilities. Manny will, without a doubt, be voted into the Hall of Fame. He’ll be remembered as a great, great hitter. But an equal part of his legacy will be turmoil that’s trailed him throughout his career; absent that, he could be discussed as among the best players in the history of the game.When Manny said earlier this month that he was the season’s real MVP, the joke wasn’t that he was so off-base, it was that he very well could have been the MVP before he missed the last month-and-a-half of the season.
If you put a gun to my head, I’d still say it’s more likely Manny is back in a Boston uniform next year than not. There have been plenty of times when both the Sox and Ramirez have been focused and dedicated on getting him out of town, and nothing has worked thus far. On the other hand, Manny’s contract becomes less scary with each passing year, and the very fact that there are fewer monster mashers hitting free agency makes it that much more likely someone will desperately want to pick up Manny’s last two years. (Of course, that’s also the very reason the Sox will be unlikely to trade him…but if the front office feels that this fall’s sit-down was more a result of Manny’s unhappiness than his balky knee,* they likely won’t want to risk two more years of periodic strikes. This was very much the fear at the 2005 trade deadline, when Manny came thisclose to going to the Mets.)
A Manny-less Red Sox team also raises the specter of David Ortiz getting approximately 800 walks a season; this is a concern Ortiz himself recently voiced in the Herald. And certainly Manny offers Papi some protection, but Ortiz’s numbers this month seem to indicate the effect might not be as great as we all thought. From April through August, Ortiz averaged 9.4 home runs a month; with two games remaining in September, he’s hit 8. And Ortiz’s OBP (.462 in September versus .409 on the season), slugging percentage (.657 versus .636), and OPS (1.120 versus 1.045) have all been better, while his batting average has stayed exactly the same, at .286.
This offseason is sure to be an interesting and tumultuous one — more on that later — and all we know for sure is that Manny is sure to be part of that tumult. Stay tuned…
* No, I’m not saying Manny is faking his injury, and it’s well known within baseball that Manny has a relatively low pain threshhold. There does seem to be a consensus that he could play without serious risk of further injury, but that’s something that’s impossible to ever truly know.
Post Categories: Manny Ramirez & Sports Reporters
September 28th, 2006 → 9:59 am @ Seth Mnookin
Dan Brown has claimed many times — most recently in his witness statement in a plagiarism case in London involving the pseudo-history book Holy Blood, Holy Grail — that the inspiration for Digital Fortress, his first novel, came in 1995, when Brown was teaching at Phillips Exeter Academy. “At the time,” Brown said in his statement, “the U.S. Secret Service came to campus and detained one of the students claiming he was a threat to national security. As it turned out, the student had sent a private email to a friend saying how much he hated President Clinton and how he thought the president should be shot. The Secret Service came to campus to make sure he wasn’t serious. … [T]he incident really stuck with me. Email was brand new on the scene, and like most people, I assumed email was private. I couldn’t figure out how the Secret Service knew what these students were saying in their email.” Brown has repeated this story many times; on his website, Brown describes “the true story” behind Digital Fortress thusly: “In the Spring of 1995, on the campus of Phillips Exeter Academy, the U.S. Secret Service made a bust…”
While researching a Vanity Fair article on the plagiarism accusations that have trailed Brown, I looked into this claim and couldn’t find any evidence that the Secret Service had ever visited Phillips Exeter. (In late 1996 and early 1997, there were several incidents in which New Hampshire high school students were accused of sending emails threatening Clinton; none of those involved Phillips Exeter.) But it took until last week before the Secret Service confirmed that they have no record of the incident Brown claims inspired him. In a letter dated September 20, Special Agent in Charge, Freedom of Information & Privacy Rights Officer Kathy Lyerly responded to a written request I had filed back in April. Lyerly wrote:
“Reference is made to your Freedom of Information/Privacy Act request originally received by the United States Secret Service on April 25, 2006, for information pertaining to the Secret Service visit to Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire.
“A review of the Secret Service’s systems of records indicates that there are no records or documents pertaining to your request in Secret Service files.”
Brown’s seeming fabrication is one of several that checker his past; there’s also one unambiguous case of plagiarism involving an academic paper written by Leonardo expert and inventor Mark E. Rosheim. (For all the details, check out the VF article.) My original piece detailed what seems like a failed plagiarism case brought against Brown by author Lewis Perdue. The publishing world (and the public) has been, for the most part, apathetic about Perdue’s case, or in any of the accusations against Brown…so I’m just throwing this out there for anyone who’s interested.
Post Categories: Dan Brown & Plagiarism
September 28th, 2006 → 9:04 am @ Seth Mnookin
Look, Josh, I know it’s embarrassing to be outed as taking your pitching cues from me…but allowing the Devil Rays to blow open the game just to prove me wrong? That’s just childish. And now you’re going to need to live with your 5.01 ERA for the whole offseason.
That’s right: the $30 million dollar man finished his first year in Boston going 16-11 and an ERA that would get him bounced out of the starting rotations in a lot of teams. He topped 200 innings, sure…but man, some of those were brutal innings.
It wasn’t a good day around the rest of the league, either. At least for Sox fans. The Marlins, that other team from Florida, beat the Reds on the strength of 5 innings of two-run ball from former Sox pitching prospect Anibal Sanchez (bringing him to 10-3 on the season) and two home runs by former Sox shortstop prospect Hanley Ramirez (one of which was an inside-the-park shot). In LA, former Red Sox playoff hero Derek Lowe won his seventh straight decision, bringing him into the league lead for wins (16); Lowe hasn’t lost since August 9. Oh, and former Sox All-Star shortstop Nomar Garciaparra also rapped out three hits in the game, brining his average (.306) above every member of the Sox save for the MIA Manny Ramirez (.318). (Nomar also left the game because of lingering soreness from his strained oblique.) Finally, Pedro Martinez, the only former Sox player that virtually everyone in Boston wants to succeed, was rocked for the third straight time. Last night, Pedro didn’t make it out of the third inning, the second time this season he failed to record at least nine outs; previous to 2006, he’d gone 289 straight starts in which he lasted three innings or more, going back to 1996. That was the longest streak of 3-innings plus in eighty-seven years, since the Big Train did it for 313 starts from 1911 through 1919. Sure, this validates Boston’s decision not to give Pedro a four-year deal — right now it seems possible the Mets will end up paying him $52 million for a season and a half of regular season starts and 0 playoff games — but it hurts to see Pedro struggle so.
The good news — and yes, I’m reaching here — is that the Orioles are coming to town, and Baltimore’s one of the few teams that make the Sox look like they deserve that $120 million-plus payroll. And there’re three more games for Papi to add to his Red Sox-record 54 home runs.
Post Categories: David Ortiz & Josh Beckett & Pedro Martinez
